LESS than a week after the Home Affairs Committee meeting that I mentioned in last week’s column, we saw the resignation of Amber Rudd as Home Secretary. Her position had rightly become untenable, after she misled our Committee and further revelations made it clear that she had misled the Commons too.

This is why Parliamentary Select Committees - like the Home Affairs of which I am a member - are so important.

Our forensic questions on Home Office targets for removals from the UK led to some extraordinary answers from Amber Rudd and senior civil servant Glynn Williams – and ultimately to even more questions not less, on a scandal first unearthed and exposed by my Parliamentary colleagues David Lammy, Diane Abbott and Dawn Butler, aided by investigative journalism and testimony from a trade union.

But the crucial question now must not just be about why a Cabinet Minister has had to go; but whether the incompetent, cruel and heartless ‘hostile environment’ policy, and the cuts, removal of appeals and discretion will go the same way as Amber Rudd too.

It is the individuals and families - including those from the Windrush Generation and many more that I have dealt with locally here in Cardiff South and Penarth - who have suffered so much, who must now be the focus of attention.

And now that Theresa May’s human shield has gone, we must also focus on the Prime Minister’s responsibility for these cruel policies, given her previous position as Home Secretary, as well as Ministers like Brandon Lewis in driving them in the first place.

I’m looking forward to putting new Home Secretary Sajid Javid under tough scrutiny – as I have done in the past when he was at the Treasury and I was in the Shadow Treasury team, and as I did in the House on Monday when I questioned him on the ‘hostile environment’ policy.

Unfortunately he clearly hadn’t been briefed (or asked to know) about the number of wrongful deportations and detentions, refused to commit to remove the net removal target (as the Home Office did last week), and didn’t appear to be aware that this goes much wider than the Windrush generation.

He needs to get a grip on this fast, and make a root and branch reform of immigration policy to reverse the current injustice and shambles.